Jones Wants No Part Of Cormier Trilogy

Jon Jones wants several things, first the light heavyweight title he never lost, and the second is to not fight Daniel Cormier again.

Speaking with ESPN, the former two time light heavyweight champion claimed that a fight with the current UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion would prove nothing as he beat Cormier twice.

“I already have all the marbles when it comes to Daniel Cormier. I’ve beaten him twice,” Jones said. “This game has never been personal. What is personal to me is chasing greatness, not individuals. So, in the case of myself and Daniel Cormier, he needs to fight myself one more time if he ever wants to be considered one of the all-time greats. I don’t need to fight him again to be considered one of the all-time greats.”

While Cormier has taken Jones’ PED test failures quite personally, especially Jones’ reduced suspension from USADA for his 2017 failure, Jones has no personal animosity towards Cormier, nor would he ever want to.

“Challenging Daniel Cormier for the heavyweight championship would be me making it personal, and it’s not personal,” Jones said. “I’m not the one who went home crying the first and second times we fought. That was him. There’s nothing inside of me that wants to take things from him or make his life harder in any way. I just want what’s rightfully mine. He can have what’s rightfully his and we can all get along.”

“I felt like he was extremely deserving of becoming a UFC champion. I felt like for the first time, the night he won, he became an actual UFC champion. I think he was an extremely successful light heavyweight, but I don’t ever think he was the light heavyweight champion. I consider myself the light heavyweight champion since 2011, despite what happened. He joined a club of champions, and I was legitimately happy for him because from afar I know how hard of a worker he is, and I think the heavyweight championship couldn’t be in more deserving hands.”

Cormier assumes that upon Jones’ return he’d be stripped of the light heavyweight title to open the door for a Jones and Alexander Gustafsson rematch at December’s UFC 232. While Jones understands the frustration Cormier has if this scenario plays out, he feels he shouldn’t have lost his belt in the first place.

“If USADA came to the conclusion that all the science points to this being a complete accident and unintentional, a part of me feels like the belt should be handed back to me,” Jones said. “A part of me feels like I shouldn’t even have to fight for the belt against Alexander Gustafsson because I was proven innocent. In a way, the belt was never [Cormier’s] in the first place. He was given the belt.”